Summary The Media Landscape (TML) Course for Communication Science (UvA)
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Module
The Media Landscape (TML)
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Summary of lectures for the Media Landscape module in the Communication Science course, including examples and relevant readings.
Using these notes I scored an 8.4/10.
Week 1: Introduction: Defining
the media landscape
Look out for key concepts (in the textbook), important for assignments
What is the media industry?
- Includes: Broadcasting, print, film and recording industries. Advertising,
marketing, PR. Social media companies
- Doesn’t include: Not really media companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft
- Media company = a company whose primary function is to produce or
distribute media content.
o Conglomerates like Disney are both a brand and are media related.
Google started with search engines and now make many products,
but they aren’t necessarily media products. Whereas Netflix are a
media company, where they distribute entertainment and produce
original content.
- Boundaries, roles are changing
o ‘Industry’ implies something commercial, but this doesn’t always
suit individual artists
o Defining industry, helps us with scope, analysis easier with
precision, and those within the industry with thinking about
markets, competitors, strategies
- Mass media in the traditional sense if their primary role is to create or
distribute media content e.g. YouTube
o Mass media = media content, radio, tv, print papers
o 5 key characteristics
1 One to many, one-way: Identical message to a mass
audience
how people experience the same product in different
places
2 Experiential goods: Value = immaterial attributes
Originality, intellectual property, stories told
value comes from how we experience things, things we
associate with them, not a physical consumable
product
Its an intangible good, unlike a banana where you
consume it and get vitamins
3 High fixed / “first copy” costs
Low marginal costs
it costs a lot to produce just one media product, then
reproducing costs little in relative to the original
product, e.g. a movie costs a lot, but then its copied
into many DVDs, whereas a banana costs the same for
every banana
Economies of scale = The price per unit decreases as
quantity of output increases
o Linear decrease of cost
, First copy costs are very high, costs are only
associated with the first copy
4 Potential for (cheap) re-versioning: re-selling in
different formats, leads to economies of scope
Economies of scope = average production costs
decrease as variety of output increases
Re-versioning you can resell the same content that
took so much effort to make, e.g., making a cinema,
Netflix, DVD version of something OR spin offs, brand
products, e.g., Frozen backpacks cheaper for media
products
5 they are high risk: Consumer taste is ‘fickle’ and hard
to predict & High first copy costs regardless # of consumers
(because it costs so much to produce the first one), if no one
wants to buy the first one
Bomb is a budget connotation
o Not just movies, but papers, books, radio, television programmes
Defining the mass media market
- Dual product market not just a single product sold to a consumer
- Media companies produce two things:
o Content, sold to audiences & Audiences, sold to advertisers
o E.g. content on YouTube, and audiences to advertisers
- Attention economy (Attention is the real product being sold/bought)
o we experience the product, but our payment isn’t enough, its the
payment from advertisers that suffice the cost of media production
- Result: advertising goals influence content/strategy Problematic for
journalism, particularly adverts influence
o The commercial nature of the media field, it at conflict for some
media producers
o It is the advertiser’s interest to commercialize the media
o Creative industries versus commercial needs broader inherent
constant tension
- But the mass media market is changing
o Digitalisation
o 4 main outcomes of digitalisation
Convergence previously separate channels fused;
channels, content & computing
Interactivity two-way replaces one-way; users become
(mass) producers. We have more say as customers
Diversification heightened user control & choice;
fragmentation/expansion of content. Because we have more
choice, we are harder to reach, more diverse range of
content
Mobility media ‘on the go’ becomes norm; ‘always on’
culture. We can consume media at any location
- Some media organizations should be socially responsible
o There are some normative values we expect, but this is at tension
with commercial constraints.
, o Media should do more good than harm paparazzi killed Diana
o A few core responsibilities:
Forum for exchange of ideas/opinions
Integrative influence for diverse societies
Protection of core values/vulnerable audiences
When things change, we have strong reactions to them in media.
- McLuhan optimism technology itself matters
o New media that are less formal, liberate audiences,
o New tech extends senses (‘cooler’, media):
Liberate audiences from hierarchies, isolation
Away from officialdom toward ‘everyday talk’
Toward a global village but this also allows extremist
groups to express themselves too
- Postman’s pessimism
o Print age: detailed, relevant, localized, coherent, rational
o Post-telegraph: dazzling stories from afar outweigh the relevant,
local
o TV/images are superficial
o Attention, rationality decreases
o Passive audience
- Critique
o Technological determinism
o Both are too focused on technology, ignoring the social context and
power dynamics
o Being too focused on tech is problematic because it shifts the blame
o Technology itself = primary cause of social change
o simplifies & overplays tech, ignores social context
o ignores power relations behind development/use
o Optimism: tech as solution to manmade problems
o Pessimism: blames tech for social problems
- Du Gay’s (1997) Circuit of culture
o Tech’s significance best understood through 5 processes:
Production: how/when/why was it developed?
Representation: how is it talked about?
Regulation: how is it controlled?
Consumption: how do we use it?
Identity: what does it say about us, when we use it?
- Determinism vs constructionism
- Media industry has shifting borders, definitions
- Its products, market structures are unique
- It’s undergoing massive changes [t.b.c.]
- Theorists react to those changes very strongly
o And companies do, too [t.b.c.]
- But, we are constantly engaging with it Deuze media is so central to our
life we don’t notice them, We don’t live with media, but in media
, o 2 Manifestations we have our own personal/individualized
information space and are always available being connected
globally
o 2 consequences Overlap. Liquefied boundaries between
work/play/alone/interaction. Life now changed to
accommodate/exploit media.
o We change the way we live to accommodate media devices
o It matters what media industries are doing because we are so
immersed in it
Summary
- Media industry, mass media, & market:
o Unique characteristics, fuzzy borders
o Social resp./creative-commercial tension unique
- Rise of digital media = further challenges, changes
- Systematically opposed responses to change
- “media life”: one approach to theorizing media
o Importance of “individualized information spaces”
- We saw individuality in your own habits, in a corp. dominated
marketplace
Key concepts
- 5 characteristics of mass media
- Economies of scale, economies of scope
o Economies of scope, it costs artists a lot to make a record, but they
earn very little from reproducing it artists complaining about how
they don’t earn a lot from royalties
- Dual product market
o Interactivity of us as consumers are also producers (like the artists)
o Attention economy 2nd article,
- Convergence, Interactivity, Diversification, Mobility
- Media’s core responsibilities
- McLuhan’s optimism vs Postman’s pessimism
- Technological determinism
o Tech is the primary cause of social change unexpected for a
platform like Reddit had such an impact on stock market
- Circuit of culture
o Regulation: how is it controlled?
When they threw the fundamentals of stock trading out of the
window, they weren’t regulated, so this reduces the
significance of the platform of stock trading.
o Identity: what does it say about us, when we use it?
Shared identity with reddit users
- Media life
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